Posted on 04/07/2024 12:32:31 PM PDT by karpov
John Sabo and Josh Thieler grew up in Pittsburgh-area communities that were hit hard as 200,000 steel and manufacturing jobs disappeared from the region, upending their parents’ generation and leaving main streets pocked with empty storefronts.
Sabo, the son and grandson of mill workers, says his father rarely found steady work after losing his job in a U.S. Steel mill, leaving Sabo to “know what government cheese tastes like.” Thieler spent part of his childhood in a trailer park in a small city that shed nearly half its population as families hunted elsewhere for work.
Today, both men have good jobs in thriving industries. But their paths to a better life have landed them in different sectors of the region’s new economy and changed their political identities, turning one into a staunch Republican and the other into a progressive Democrat.
Pittsburgh is at the center of a class inversion between the two parties that is redefining American politics. Democrats have traded their former blue-collar base for professional-class, metropolitan workers, while Republicans have become overwhelmingly dependent on working-class voters concentrated in far-flung suburbs, small towns and rural areas.
In Pennsylvania, the largest 2024 battleground state, President Biden’s victory four years ago depended in large part on big gains among voters such as Thieler, a software company manager and former Republican who is now part of the city’s heavily Democratic professional class. But those gains have been overtaken by opposition from voters like Sabo, who works in the natural-gas industry, a sector that has given a boost to blue-collar workers in rural counties.
These energy-economy voters see Biden as hostile to fracking, which taps natural gas trapped in sedimentary rock deep underground. The sector has drawn billions of dollars in new investment in Pennsylvania, much of it in the state’s southwest corner.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I’m as conservative as it gets, but I think there’s something wrong with Santorum. I can’t put my finger on it, but the guy creeps me out. Even more now when I accidentally see or hear him on video.
I would never ever and have never voted for a single dimocRAT in my life, I would have just skipped that part of the ballot.
That’s a good and useful observation. Thanks for pointing that out. Had not occurred to me.
Yeah right…
Free government cheese was good. Also the peanut butter.
My family roots are in the Southern Tier / western NY area. When we were kids and visiting our grandparents, as we drove through there were oil derricks pumping in many people’s yards. Haven’t noticed that in a very long time when we’ve gone back to visit. Probably some soul sucking NY law forbids it.
We can and should make steel here again.
Lots if it.
Drill baby drill, coal and natural gas to power it all.
If artillery is still effective in wars we should double Russias max production plus artillery pieces and replacement tube barrels.
*I think there’s something wrong with Santorum.*
He went wobbly-had to. Same with Toomey. That’s how Specter won. Santorum talked tough and paid the price when the pendulum swung the other way. 2 terms is good. Hopefully we win again after 3 terms of that Casey lightweight.
I was employed by an NGO that provided food for Egypt. I had to make an emergency run to the Upper Nile because inhabitants were complaining that the cheese was no good. When I got there I found they thought it was soap and tried to lather it on their body. The result: Instant flies.
I’m thinking that most of oil fields in the Dakota’s are on private ground.
The gas fields of Wyoming where I worked all had government numbers on the locations.
It was different in North Dakota.
All the locations in North Dakota had someone’s name on them.
I’d be hauling material to a location and drive by a house with the same name on the mail box as the name of the location I was going to
would be nice if they actually do vote against Biden and other Dems.
How did they like the taste of the soap?
“ Free government cheese was good. Also the peanut butter.”
Yeah, the cheese WAS good. We had lot of it because my Uncle owned a bar and guys would trade a hunk of cheese for a beer. I was surprised at how good it was.
But I never tasted or even heard of the peanut butter!
I just talked with a hard core lib friend from OR.
I don’t think he will vote for Trump but it is VERY clear he no longer believes the RATS or Biden.
“In the Southern Tier of NY,”
I remember NY Democrats always talking about helping the Southern Tier. Here was a golden opportunity and the threw it away.
Ah, BINGO! We are, for the most part, Red down here. At least they threw Dominion out, but the WiFi scanners remain.
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